


can't face this life alone

by Elsajeni



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19468489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsajeni/pseuds/Elsajeni
Summary: Crowley's door isn't locked. That doesn't in itself worry Aziraphale-- he's never found it locked when he visits, which makes sense, really, what does a demon have to fear from housebreakers?-- although if he were thinking clearly, it might occur to him that normally he can hear it unlock itself as he approaches. This time there's no such telltaleclick; he just reaches the door at a dead sprint, flings it open and charges into the flat...The one where Aziraphale managesnotto step into the portal, rushes to Crowley's flat since he can't reach him on the phone, and finds a puddle of holy water and demon goo on the floor next to a plant mister...





	can't face this life alone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](https://corellon-grace.tumblr.com/post/185495421795/okay-but-imagine-if-aziraphale-dodged-the-portal) by tumblr user corellon-grace
> 
> Beta credit to [forthegreatergood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood) and [opalescent_potato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescent_potato/pseuds/opalescent_potato), who were indispensable in fixing all the bits where I just had "[FEELINGS??]" written in the margin. Thanks, pals. <3

Crowley's door isn't locked. That doesn't in itself worry Aziraphale-- he's never found it locked when he visits, which makes sense, really, what does a demon have to fear from housebreakers?-- although if he were thinking clearly, it might occur to him that normally he can hear it unlock itself as he approaches. This time there's no such telltale _click_ ; he just reaches the door at a dead sprint, flings it open and charges into the flat.

He isn't thinking clearly. He doesn't have _time_ to think clearly. He's just run out on the Metatron itself, he's-- well, he's _deserted_ , hasn't he, he's expected Upstairs any moment to take up a sword and line up with the legions and there's no way in heav-- in hell-- well, he's not going, anyway. And maybe worse, he's told them exactly where to go, no hope for any delays as they try to figure out where the real Antichrist has ended up. He should have called Crowley straight away, he should have known, after six thousand years he ought to _know_ who he can trust--

"Crowley!" The demon's always met him in the lounge before. Then again, he's never turned up uninvited before; for a long time that was part of the Arrangement, that they'd keep out of each other's business except by prior invitation, and the habit's hard to break. "Crowley, it's me, where are you?"

 _Sulking somewhere about being hung up on_ , Aziraphale thinks hopefully, but it's starting to dawn on him that the flat feels... emptier than that.

"Crowley, we don't have _time_ for this," he calls again, not really expecting an answer, and casts around for a clue.

There's a safe set into the wall, standing wide open, empty. A few steps down from that, the door to a room he's never been in, just ajar. Inside that room--

Aziraphale stumbles back, one hand catching at the doorframe to steady himself, the other at his throat.

_It can't be. Not the holy water-- no, it's something else, it has to be, there wasn't this much in the flask--_

There was. There must have been, because there's the flask, dropped or thrown to the floor on the other side of the puddle. And because of what's _in_ the puddle, the greasy dark stain at the center of it, the tang of brimstone in the air-- it's been millennia since he's seen firsthand what holy water can do to a demon, not since the Fall and the first War, but it's not something you forget.

Not something _he_ can forget, certainly. Something that's been very much on his mind this last century and a half, since Crowley first asked him for the stuff.

There's still smoke rising from the, the _thing_ in the center of the puddle. Aziraphale trembles; he must have been too late by just the barest fraction--

He manages to batter down the horror for a second, force himself to think. It doesn't make any sense. He's _just_ been on the phone with Crowley. Telling him that he'd found the Antichrist, in fact, that they still had a chance of stopping Armageddon. How things could have gone this wrong, this quickly--

 _Got an old friend here_ , he remembers, suddenly. Someone had been in the flat already, when he'd phoned.

Someone from Downstairs? Just the kind of contingency Crowley had insisted he wanted the holy water for, someone sent to retrieve him, or... or to dispose of him-- but they wouldn't have found the holy water, would they? Or if they had, they wouldn't have dared use it. He's never known any demon but Crowley to be that... that _reckless_ , to have that little regard for his own neck as long as he got the last word in.

Someone from Aziraphale's own side, now-- an angel could have sensed the holy water easily, however well Crowley had hidden the flask. And they certainly wouldn't have been above using it, not against a demon. Had they just wanted to get an early start on the war, or... he thinks _your boyfriend with the dark glasses_ , and feels a sick certainty, a desperate, dark guilt welling up in his gut.

For him, to teach him a lesson. Or just to tie up a loose end; he'd told the Metatron everything he knew, they might have guessed that Crowley knew it, too. His doing, either way. His fault.

God, and Crowley'd tried to tell him, tried to ask him for help. _An old friend_ \-- older than old, someone from before the Fall, someone nursing a grudge for that long, standing there listening to Crowley trying to warn him, Aziraphale blundering on oblivious in the excitement of having finally made the right decision. And he'd hung up, and left Crowley alone to face... _this_.

Aziraphale can't bear to look at what's become of Crowley, even as he can't tear his eyes from the puddle on the floor, from all that's left of him. He's caught between the impossibility of denial and the horror of acknowledgement, his head swimming with guilt and panic. He feels he might drown in it, in the awful reality of what's happened here, his own responsibility for it-- he can't catch his breath, can't move from the doorway.

He has to move. He has to get to Tadfield. He can still stop it-- or maybe he can't, but at least he can _try_ , and he'd promised Crowley, hadn't he? Beneath the guilt and grief a flare of anger kindles in his chest, and grows. If Heaven wants their war this badly, he'll give them a damn war, he just has to get to Tadfield before it starts--

The Bentley's not downstairs. He'd hoped he could take it-- not that he has any idea how to drive the thing, but he's seen the way Crowley drives, he can hardly do worse than _that_. But it's gone; towed, he supposes, without Crowley here to protect it. Or maybe just vanished, so much a part of Crowley after all these years that it went when he did.

He flags down a cab instead, and surprises the hell out of the driver when, as soon as he's in, the car rises forty feet above the ground and takes off like a bolt of lightning.

Prayer's not an option anymore. But in the backseat, Aziraphale shuts his eyes and hopes, and thinks _maybe, maybe if I'm lucky, maybe I'll get there in time..._

* * *

In some ways, demons are cleverer than angels. Less inclined to jump to conclusions, for one.

Crowley drives aimlessly, trusting the Bentley to handle itself, and tries to work it out. All right. Aziraphale is... _missing_ , he settles on _missing_ , because any other option feels like navigating a narrow ledge around a deep, deep pit. Aziraphale is missing, the bookshop is a total loss, and there's some sort of-- he thinks about the glimpse of blue light coming from the back of the shop, not bright but uncomfortable to look at, and a humming like celestial hold music audible (and annoying) even over the crackle of flames-- some sort of portal to Heaven standing open in the back room as the building burns around it. So what in heaven does that _mean_?

He wonders, just for a second, whether Aziraphale might have left willingly. If Heaven called, and summoned him back to his place, and he chose them.

 _But he promised me_ , Crowley thinks wretchedly, and utterly fails to convince himself. The Arrangement was always meant to be temporary, wasn't it? And what's a promise to a demon worth, anyway?

 _But he wouldn't leave the bookshop_, he tries instead, and that _does_ settle it. If there's one thing he's certain of, it's that there's no power, earthly or otherwise, that could convince Aziraphale to leave his books to burn. The bookshop is destroyed; he'd have saved it, if he had any choice; so something must have kept him from it.

But that could be nearly anything: taken back to Heaven by force, discorporated, destroyed-- Crowley realizes his hands are white-knuckled on the wheel, and he forces himself to let go, shaking them out until feeling returns to his fingers.

Destroyed. It _is_ a possibility, and he forces himself to consider it. But there's not much that could truly kill an angel; the only real possibility he can think of would be that Hell sent someone after Aziraphale as well, and he knows, he _knows_ no one down there knows enough to connect the two of them. He's been too careful for that. And anyway, how would the celestial portal fit in? No. It doesn't make sense, and, gratefully, he dismisses the idea.

Discorporated, then, or forced back to Heaven, or both. He can see them doing either, as punishment-- if they've worked out what Aziraphale has been up to, that he's been trying to stop it all, or if they've somehow caught onto the Arrangement. But that doesn't seem right, either-- if they've got him back, why leave the channel open?

 _Because they haven't. Because they're still looking for him!_ It's the only thing that makes any sense, and Crowley thumps the steering wheel and hisses _yes_ between his teeth.

It hardly means that Aziraphale's safe. It doesn't even really mean that nothing's happened to him _yet_ \-- Crowley isn't sure what could stop Heaven tracking down one of their own angels, but he supposes it could be that something else has happened to him, that he's been discorporated in the fire or, or hit by a bus or _something_. But if Heaven is still looking, then Aziraphale is still on Earth, and if Aziraphale is on Earth, then he's in danger-- both in the general sense that all of Creation is currently in danger and in the excruciatingly personal sense of _did you ever visit Gomorrah?_ \-- and if Aziraphale is in danger, then no blessed _traffic jam_ is going to keep Crowley from getting him out of it.

He shuts his eyes for a moment (the Bentley takes a sharp corner going eighty) and gets his bearings. He can _feel_ the summons by now, a sort of restless itching at the base of his skull-- Armageddon is getting very close, and all the legions of Hell are called to it, even, apparently, those who are in Hell's bad books. Crowley... listens, if you can call it listening when you use your soul to do it, and finds the direction it's coming from, and the car swings around another corner and onto a new course.

He's not sure where he's going, or what he's going to do when he gets there. But he's _damn_ sure he's going to find Aziraphale, and not let him out of sight again until... well, until the end of the world.

Which will be in two hours, give or take.

"Better get a wiggle on, then," Crowley mutters aloud, and laughs as he puts his foot down hard on the gas.

* * *

The gate guard, Aziraphale reminds himself with an effort, has nothing to do with this. Nothing to do with the coming Armageddon; nothing to do with what's happened to Crowley. It would be wrong to smite him.

Sergeant Shadwell does, sort of-- _you horrible, stupid little man, if you hadn't turned up, if you hadn't slowed me down_\-- but he is, technically, on Aziraphale's side. Here under his orders, in fact, though it took some fast talking. Smiteable targets are regrettably thin on the ground, at just the moment that he's most itching to do some righteous smiting.

If he could just get in the damn _gate_. He can _feel_ what's happening in there, the tension building, the hosts of Heaven and Hell crowding in from every side.

"Look," Aziraphale tries once again, "it is _vitally important_ \--"

The guard raises his gun. Aziraphale swears under his breath and makes a complicated gesture. The guard vanishes.

It's a long run from the gate into the heart of the base, and when they finally reach the center of the storm he thinks, for a moment, that they're too late. That it's started already, irrevocably; that all he'll be able to do is stand in the way for a moment, that there's no time left to stop the war or save anyone or even to avenge Crowley in any way that matters. The Four have arrived, and set it into motion, and he can _feel_ the surge of power, intention, pouring off the child in front of them. The Antichrist, found at last, but too late, too _late_ \--

And then the boy turns his gaze away from Death, and says, "Get them," and something... changes.

"That boy," Aziraphale says urgently to Shadwell, pointing. "That one, in the middle. Wait-- _watch him_ \--"

There's a strange sound from behind him, a sort of slow-motion crash. With an effort, he takes his eyes off the confrontation in front of him (there's something like a scream, and the rattle of a sword falling to the ground) long enough to glance over his shoulder and see the burning wreck of a car rolling to a halt. More soldiers, he supposes, running up against the sheer force of the Antichrist's will. He turns back, thinking, _Pity._

He stops halfway.

Soldiers-- soldiers go around in jeeps and big square trucks and things, don't they? Not anything even _sort of_ resembling a vintage saloon car. Not that he's an expert, he's never paid much attention to cars-- but for one.

Aziraphale turns back again, slowly, holding his breath, sure that he imagined it. But-- it is, it _is_ the Bentley, almost unrecognizable in this state but he hardly needs to recognize the car, because the door opens and out of it, in a pouring cloud of smoke--

Crowley scans the scene, brightens when his gaze lights on Aziraphale, and starts toward him. Aziraphale lets out a wordless little cry and breaks into a run.

Crowley catches him by the shoulders, stopping him at arm's length. Up close, he looks exhausted, and Aziraphale can feel his hands shake, but his voice is steady. "Angel. You're all right? They didn't get to you?"

" _Crowley_ ," Aziraphale says, and clutches at the demon's arm. He wants desperately to say more, and finds that he can't, that it's too much to put into words.

"Has it started yet?"

Crowley's trying to get past him, Aziraphale realizes. "It's all right," he says urgently, trying to stop him, to keep him here until he can figure out how to say _Crowley, Crowley, I thought I'd lost you, Crowley, don't leave me alone again..._ "The boy-- he's not what we expected, I think he's _stopped_ it--"

"Yes?" Crowley cranes around him. "What are they, then, peace negotiators?"

Aziraphale looks, and swears. An Archangel, and a Prince of Hell, and even from here he can hear Gabriel, all smiles and geniality, and Beelzebub's buzzing voice, both of them explaining that it's right that there should be a war, that it's _good_. He can hear the boy trying to argue back, and faltering against their certainty. "No-- no, no, no, why would they send _Gabriel_ , why couldn't it be someone with any _sense_ \--"

"Your side hasn't got any of those." Crowley starts forward, towing Aziraphale with him by the elbow. "Mine either, to be fair. Come on, angel, you'd better think of something _really quickly_..."

"It's all a part of the Great Plan," he hears Gabriel say, in what the Archangel probably thinks is a reassuring voice, and Aziraphale feels anger flare up in him again. That he's regained Crowley just in time to lose him again; that the _Plan_ could be for it all to end like this, cruel and stupid and wasteful; that Gabriel can speak of it with such certainty, with a smile on his face. He can't stop himself thinking _what do you know, what do any of us know_\-- and suddenly he has it.

He takes a deep breath and lets go of Crowley's arm, and calls to Gabriel, "Excuse me?"

* * *

It's over. It's worked. It absolutely shouldn't have worked, and yet-- it's worked. Crowley looks across the tarmac at Adam and his friends pedaling away, looks up at the clearing sky, feels the tension drain from him at last--

\--and is nearly knocked flat as Aziraphale turns, takes a shuddering breath, and fairly launches himself at him.

He stumbles back but catches Aziraphale more or less by reflex, arms and wings both flung protectively around him. "Angel," he says, almost laughing, "angel, it's all right, we've done it. We've stopped it."

Aziraphale shudders against him, and it dawns on Crowley that Aziraphale is weeping. Or, no, not exactly-- angels do weep, but normally only to make a point about sin, and when they do it's noble and beautiful and puts you in mind of a television PSA against littering, if the litter were in your soul. A single tear upon an alabaster cheek, sort of thing. Aziraphale is _crying_ , messier and more human; his shoulders shake with it, and if Crowley could see Aziraphale's face, he knows in his soul it would be red and blotchy.

"It's all right," he says again, gentler. "Aziraphale, come on-- it's all right, it's really over this time-- angel, you're going to scare the humans."

"Sod the humans," Aziraphale says wetly into his shoulder, and then, before Crowley can even pretend to be scandalized, "I'm sorry. But-- _Crowley_ \--"

Crowley shifts one hand to squeeze the angel's shoulder, wings rustling with the movement. "I know. But look, we did it, didn't we? Or someone did, anyway. We, er, supervised. Everything's all right." Guiltily, he remembers the bookshop-- _not quite everything_ \-- and starts to add, "Well--"

"Your flat," Aziraphale says, in much the same tone that Crowley is about to say _your bookshop_.

It doesn't matter. Nothing in the flat _matters_ , not in the same way that Aziraphale's books do-- and anyway he's already lost the Bentley, it's not as if it could get worse. Still, Crowley tenses. "Something wrong with it?"

"I went there, I was looking for you--" He wouldn't have thought Aziraphale could hold any tighter to him, but somehow he manages it, pulling Crowley even closer. "Crowley-- the holy water, I thought--"

It takes a while for Crowley to work it out, and he's just about to say something stupid like _thought I wouldn't stoop to it? Look, this is no time to be worried about cruelty to demons_ when something clicks. The holy water, and Aziraphale's reluctance to give it to him, for all those years. His own terrible fear at the sight of the bookshop burning, and the way the angel is clinging to him, as if he might disappear at any moment.

He goes very still, and says instead, "Aziraphale."

Aziraphale takes a deep breath against his shoulder, and then another. When he speaks again, his voice is steadier, and very, very soft. "I thought you were gone. Destroyed. And I couldn't bear it."

"Oh," Crowley says, numbly.

That can't be right, can it? All this, over him? He shifts his shoulder, just enough to get a look at Aziraphale's face, which is streaked with soot from his jacket and blotchy with crying and still radiantly, _offensively_ beautiful, and without meaning to Crowley raises a hand to cup Aziraphale's jaw, swipes with his thumb at a tear-track.

"Angel," he says, and hardly recognizes his own voice, "angel, please, don't cry, not over _me_ \--"

" _Stupid_ ," Aziraphale says, with infinite tenderness, and he's still so close, holding Crowley so tightly, he only has to turn his head a little and--

Aziraphale, pressed against him, holding him, not hiding or pushing away or worried about anyone seeing. Aziraphale's face cupped between his hands, Aziraphale's hand on the small of his back, keeping him close, Aziraphale's lips against his, warm and soft and tender--

Crowley wraps his wings around Aziraphale again, tighter, kisses him back with the fierceness of six thousand years of waiting, and demons don't pray, for obvious reasons, but he lets himself risk one fervent hope: _let us stay like this, let us stay like this forever_.


End file.
